"Yo, Marcus," Happy said. "You already know the order."
"Three double-stacked with ghost pepper aioli, smoked cheddar, and caramelized onions. One with extra bacon. Two to go. Am I wrong?" Marcus remembered what he normally consumed so he answered that.
"Not even close." Happy replied. "Tony's been holed up in his lab since he got back. Especially after the recent fiasco. I want to surprise him with your burger. I am sure he will love it."
"Isn't he in LA." Marcus said in a low tone so that others couldn't hear what he and Happy were discussing.
"He is and that is why I will go straight to airport and take the jet to LA." Happy said as if it was very normal to ferry food from New York to LA. The rich were truly disgusting!
"Sigh! I will never understand the behaviors of rich people. " Marcus sighed as he got to work. "So what's the occasion this time?" He made some small talk.
"Eh, just doing some cleanup. PR stuff. Tony being Tony. Figured I'd bring him a little something to make him less... Iron and more Man, you know? Since he came out."
"That sounds so wrong." Marcus couldn't help but reply that. Happy didn't seem to get the joke and change the topic.
"If you ever want to set up a second truck in Malibu, let me know. I'll get you beachfront clearance." Happy had been trying to make Marcus move from this place to LA but Marcus always refused. New York was the hub of chaos and Marcus wanted to swim in it in the coming years. Being in LA, he would be isolated.
"You know my answer Happy." Marcus didn't flinch at all. Happy could only smile at it.
"You're doing God's work, man. Seriously." Happy said. "See you next time I'm in town."
With those words Happy left for his car while Marcus continued serving the other customers.
The rest of the day went by without much incident. Marcus finished serving the late lunch crowd, cleaned up the truck, restocked supplies, and drove it back to his place. Marcus spent the evening making some notes on his system's limits, testing a few recipe enhancements, and watching the news. As expected, Tony Stark's Iron Man announcement was still the headline, and conspiracy theories were already brewing online. He shook his head with a tired smile. That man really couldn't lay low even if he tried.
It was around 2:13 a.m. when Marcus heard the first sound.
A creak — faint, but not faint enough. It was the sort of sound that would never have registered to an average person. But Marcus wasn't average. Not anymore. The small noise woke him up as if it was brain seemed to be alert even when he was in deep sleep. He didn't move right away.
His senses had picked up on everything — the whisper of shoes on wood, the subtle rustle of jackets, even the faint smell of cigarette smoke from one of the men outside his door.
Four of them.
Two with guns.
Their breathing was uneven. Nervous. Probably amateurs. Maybe hired thugs who thought the food truck guy was an easy mark. Or maybe someone had been watching the odd traffic around his truck and connected a few dots they shouldn't have. This place wasn't known for home invasion, but maybe his luck was just bad.
Marcus didn't care. They had made one fatal mistake — assuming they were hunting prey.
What they didn't know was that Marcus had already changed the efficiency of his body. A tenfold enhancement. Strength, speed, reflexes, hearing, vision, cognitive processing — every function his body performed had been boosted to superhuman levels.
Yes, he changed himself. One of the restrictions of the system was that he couldn't change any living person, yes he had checked multiple times. So he was surprised that he could see his own properties when he saw of himself in the mirror.
The first thing he tried to do was to change the luck of himself. Luck was a broken thing and it would be more powerful than any kind of bodily strength. But he was downtrodden when he realized he couldn't focus or bring out the luck value of himself. So after moping around for a bit, he decided to change the overall degree of bodily functions.
Doing this might not make every property of his body 10 times better but it would boost himself in all round way. And though his senses, his strength and other properties weren't 10 times the original, it was a overall increase which made his body ready to be able to adapt to the changes.
If he had only changed one property, for example just strength, his brain might not have been able to handle the sudden muscle mass increase and other factors that came with it. He came to this conclusion after much thought and contemplation.
He was, at this point, a better version of Captain America.
Marcus stepped out of bed without a sound, his movements precise and controlled. He moved to his closet, sliding open a false panel at the back. Inside, nestled in a foam-lined case, was what looked like a standard-issue pepper ball gun — except it was anything but standard.
This was his version.
He'd enhanced it the same way he had his body — tenfold efficiency. That meant the polymer was tougher than military-grade composites, the firing mechanism smoother and faster, and the accuracy—deadly precise. The trigger had zero lag, and the pressure system delivered shots that could punch through plywood like a nail gun.
And the ammunition?
Each pepper ball had been upgraded too — ten times the penetration. Originally designed to stun or disorient, now each round easily penetrate like a normal bullet. Yes, Marcus had tried it once one weekend to see the power. Of course he did this in isolation and in a place which was away from everyone.
He didn't want anyone to know of what he had built. A non lethal gun to a perfect fatal weapon.